Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977)

          While it's easy to see why Twilight's Las Gleaming tanked at the box office during its original release and remains, at best, a minor cult favorite to this day, the movie is a lively addition to the venerable tradition of loopy conspiracy flicks. Featuring an outlandish plot about a crazed U.S. general seizing control of a nuclear-missile launch site in order to force the president to reveal secret documents about America's involvement in Vietnam, the picture is far-fetched in the extreme. It's also ridiculously overlong, sprawling over two and a half hours. Furthermore, gonzo director Robert Aldrich filigrees the story with such unnecessary adornments as split-screen photography, which he uses to simultaneously show the goings-on at the launch site and the reactions of power-brokers in Washington, D.C. Plus, of course, the storyline is downbeat in every imaginable way. For adventurous moviegoers, however, these weaknesses are just as easily interpreted as strengths, particularly when the entertainment value of the acting is taken into consideration.

          Burt Lancaster stars as the general, memorably incarnating a macho idealist who uses duplicity and strategy to manipulate enemies and subordinates alike. Charles Durning, rarely cast as authority figures beyond the level of middle management, makes an unlikely president, his innate likability and the darkness that always simmered beneath his persona offering a complex image of humanistic leadership. Also populating the movie are leather-faced tough guy Richard Widmark, as the officer charged with wresting control of the launch site from the general’s gang; Paul Winfield and Burt Young, as two members of the gang; and reliable veterans Roscoe Lee Browne, Joseph Cotten, Melvyn Douglas, and Richard Jaeckel (to say nothing of Blacula himself, William Marshall). Quite a tony cast for a whackadoodle thriller that borders on science fiction.

          Based on a novel by Walter Wager, Twilight's Last Gleaming represents Aldrich's bleeding-heart storytelling at its most arch—the goal of Lancaster's character is revealing that the U.S. government knew Vietnam was a lost cause but kept fighting, at great cost of blood and treasure, simply to intimidate the Soviet Union. If there's a single ginormous logical flaw in the picture (in fact, there are probably many), it's that Lancaster's character could have achieved his goal through simpler means. But the ballsy contrivance of the picture is that seizing the launch site is a theatrical gesture meant to capture the world's attention. As such, the operatic bloat of Twilight's Last Gleaming reflects the protagonist's modus operandi--like the crusading general, Aldrich swings for the fences. Twilight's Last Gleaming is a strange hybrid of hand-wringing political drama (somewhat in the Rod Serling mode) with guns-a-blazin' action—for better or worse, there's not another movie like this one. Genuine novelty is a rare virtue, and so is the passion with which Aldrich made this offbeat picture.

Twilight's Last Gleaming: GROOVY

The Longest Yard (1974)

          A great sports movie, a memorable comedy, and one of leading man Burt Reynolds’ best films, The Longest Yard is also a potent expression of anti-Establishment rage, channeling the tenor of its time through the unlikely prism of a prison picture about football. Directed by action master Robert Aldrich at his sharpest, the movie blends brutal gridiron violence with intense behind-bars clashes to create a pervasive vibe of us-vs.-them tension. The film’s humor emerges almost entirely from character and circumstance, and the script (by Albert S. Ruddy and Tracy Keenan Wynn) is filled with characters who are strangely believable even though many of them should seem absurd. The prison angle justifies the presence of extreme personalities, and the cast—which mostly comprises character actors and real-life athletes—relishes the story’s ample opportunities for super-sized moments.

          Reynolds stars as Paul “Wrecking” Crewe, a former pro quarterback whose career was tarnished by a point-shaving scandal. After a fight with his girlfriend, Paul gets drunk and instigates a police chase by driving recklessly. Then he’s thrown into a prison run by sports nut Warden Rudolph Hazen (Eddie Albert). Hazen has organized his guards into a football squad, and he expects Paul to coach the team while incarcerated. Paul refuses, so he’s put on backbreaking labor duty. Eventually, Paul makes a counter-proposal to Hazen, offering to train a team of inmates for an exhibition game against the guards. Although it’s understood that Hazen expects the guards to win, Paul inspires his fellow convicts by saying the game is a chance to pummel their oppressors. The plot goes through several twists past this point, and interesting relationships develop between Paul, the guards, and the inmates; Hazen’s scheme to exploit a convict ends up enflaming the resentment that festers inside the prison walls. And if none of this sounds particularly funny, rest assured The Longest Yard is filled with wicked humor, even as the storyline deftly integrates dramatic elements.

          The centerpiece of the movie is, of course, the big game, which stands alongside the football match in M*A*S*H (1970) as one of the funniest gridiron sequences in movie history. Reynolds thrives here, infusing his role with the sardonic attitude that distinguishes his best performances, and Hollywood veteran Albert makes a terrific villain by portraying a man whose greatest weakness is his arrogant reliance on power. Among the large supporting cast, standouts include James Hampton as Paul’s sidekick, Caretaker; Ed Lauter as the cruel coach of the guards’ team; and Bernadette Peters’ as Hazen’s va-va-voom secretary, who becomes sympathetic to Paul’s plight. Best of all is the film’s terrific climax, which perfectly crystallizes the complex textures of the storyline. The Longest Yard was loosely remade in 2001 as the Vinnie Jones movie Mean Machine, and directly remade in 2005, with Adam Sandler taking over the Reynolds role. Stick with the original.

The Longest Yard: RIGHT ON

Too Late the Hero (1970)

          After making an influential and popular World War II action picture, The Dirty Dozen (1967), it was inevitable that eclectic filmmaker Robert Aldrich would return to the milieu, and almost just as inevitable that his foll0w-up picture would fall short of the high bar set by its predecessor. While Too Late the Hero features the same muscular combination of provocative drama and slick production values that made The Dirty Dozen so vital, Too Late the Hero suffers from a diffuse storyline and a padded running time, to say nothing of an ineffectual leading performance. So, although the picture is more or less watchable, even if one is tempted to hit the fast-forward button during repetitive sequences, Too Late the Hero fails to make much of an impression.

          Cliff Robertson stars as Lt. Lawson, an American junior officer whose assignment as a command-center translator in the Pacific theater keeps him away from combat. The cushy gig doesn’t last, however, because Lawson gets reassigned to a British commando unit tasked with taking out a Japanese radio installation. Serving under uptight Capt. Hornsby (Denholm Elliot), Lawson and his new comrades trudge through dense jungle, avoiding Japanese patrols, until a series of skirmishes change their circumstances for the worse. Eventually, Lawson and a snarky British enlisted man, Hearne (Michael Caine), inherit responsibility for completing the mission, forcing the unlikely predicament of Lawson becoming a valiant leader. The idea of the movie is strong—exploring the question of whether heroes are born or made—but the execution is not.

          Aldrich, who also co-wrote the picture, lets the narrative drag through unnecessary sequences (there are lots of marching montages), and his contrivance of a combat-averse protagonist means the main character spends a great deal of time watching other people do interesting things. Exacerbating the problem, Robertson simply isn’t expressive enough here to make Lawson’s journey fascinating—in fact, both Caine and Elliot upstage Robertston whenever the British actors share screen time with their American leading man. Caine is largely underused until the last stretch of the picture, when his acidic line deliveries become meaningful on a story level, and Elliot actually comes off the best of the three by portraying a stalwart man whose desire to demonstrate bravery leads him to take foolish risks.

Too Late the Hero: FUNKY

Hustle (1975)

          An admirable but not entirely successful attempt at transplanting classic film-noir themes into a hip ’70s milieu, this downbeat detective thriller features the peculiar pairing of delicate Gallic beauty Catherine Deneuve and suave Deep South stud Burt Reynolds. The fact that these actors don’t exist in the same cinematic universe reflects the many clashing tonalities director Robert Aldrich brings to Hustle. After smoothly blending comedy and drama in an earlier Reynolds movie, The Longest Yard (1974), Aldrich tries to do too many things here, because Hustle aspires to be a tragedy, a whodunit, a commentary on sexual politics, and more. Since Aldrich was generally at his best making unpretentious pulp, with deeper themes buried below the surface, his striving for Big Statements is awkward—much in the same way that Deneuve’s cool sophistication fails to gel with Reynolds’ hot emotionalism, the high and low aspects of this movie’s storytelling collide to produce a narrative muddle.

          The picture begins with cynical LA detectives Phil Gaines (Reynolds) and Louis Belgrave (Paul Winfield) commencing their investigation into the murder of a young hooker. The victim’s father, Korean War vet Marty Hollinger (Ben Johnson), is sniffing around the crime as well, because he wants revenge. When clues identify lawyer Leo Sellers (Eddie Albert) as a possible suspect, things get tricky not only because Sellers has political influence but because Sellers is a patron of another hooker, Nicole (Deneuve)—who happens to be Phil’s girlfriend.

          The idea of a cop living on both sides of the law is always provocative, but in this case, Phil’s relationship with Nicole makes him unsympathetic. Tolerating her demeaning career paints him as a user, while pushing her to abandon her work suggests he’s a chauvinist; there’s no way for Reynolds to win. Nonetheless, the actor gives a valiant effort, while Deneuve struggles to elevate her clichéd role despite obvious difficulty with English-language dialogue. Inhibited by iffy writing and overreaching direction, the stars end up letting their physicality do most of the acting—Deneuve looks ravishing and Reynolds looks tough. But that’s not enough. Excepting Johnson, whose obsessive bloodlust resonates, most of the skilled supporting cast gets lost in the cinematic muddiness, and Aldrich does no one any favors by shooting interiors with ugly, high-contrast lighting. Still, Hustle gets points for seediness and for the nihilism of its ending.

Hustle: FUNKY

The Frisco Kid (1979)

The runaway success of Mel Brooks’ Western spoof Blazing Saddles (1974) inspired many underwhelming imitators, including pictures by a handful of directors who should have known better. For instance, Robert Aldrich, whose career includes several great action films and melodramas, had no business helming an “outrageous” romp about a rabbi-turned-outlaw—although whether anyone could have made a watchable movie from this gimmicky premise is open to debate. Anyway, Blazing Saddles star Gene Wilder is Rabbi Avram Belinski, a wide-eyed rube who travels from Poland to America in order to assume his post as the leader of a San Francisco synagogue. After getting robbed by hooligans upon reaching the East Coast, Avram finds work on a railroad as a means of making his way West. This brings him into the orbit of Tommy Lillard (Harrison Ford), an outlaw who takes sympathy on the hapless traveler. They become unlikely companions for a series of what presumably were conceived as “wacky adventures.” In Aldrich’s hands, however, the episodes comprising The Frisco Kid are loud non-events, spasms of shouting and slapstick connected by exhaustingly exuberant music—the vignettes in look and feel like comedy without actually being funny. While much of the blame falls to Aldrich and his screenwriters for failing to summon inspiration, Wilder is complicit, too. Succumbing to his worst excesses, notably bulging his eyes at regular intervals and screaming most of his dialogue, Wilder presents such a broad caricature of Jewishness that he’s almost unbearable to watch, to say nothing of borderline offensive. This isn’t Wilder at his worst (alas, he was even more grating while acting in the first couple of movies he directed), but this sure ain’t Wilder at his best. As for Ford, caught in the post-Star Wars transitional period of his career, he doesn’t really have a character to portray, so he overcompensates with unearned intensity that doesn’t suit the comedic milieu.

The Frisco Kid: LAME